Robbie Lee & Lea Bertucci - Winds Bells Falls (2022) [Official Digital Download 24/48]

Winds Bells Falls is the meeting between two of New York’s most unconventional musicians, sound artist Lea Bertucci and multi-everything instrumentalist Robbie Lee. The duo mix colorful free improv with musique concrete, sculpting experimental instrumental noise into a fascinating and even joyful encounter. On the album Lee plays medieval and baroque woodwinds, celeste (bell keyboard), and tubular chimes, while Bertucci live-manipulates and mangles his playing, hands inside a reel-to-reel tape machine, transforming and transfiguring in real time.

The recording began at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works, in a shipping container studio during Bertucci’s artist residency in 2019. That first session created the pieces using Lee’s woodwinds: the human-sized contrabass recorder, the mouse-sized medieval gemshorn, and wooden traverso flute from the early 1700s. For the other pieces they moved to Lee’s studio, bringing in Lea’s reel-to-reel tape machine and electronics, with Lee on 1920s bell instruments — vintage tubular bells, and the pearloid covered celeste keyboard (usually heard in its twinkling tones in The Nutcracker and many lush midcentury jazz/pop standards).

The album begins with “Glitter And Gleam,” where the magical sparkling tones of the warped celeste do just that. It is an unexpectedly cinematic opening, slowly building to a shimmering and even emotional peak, but that gives no hints abouts where the album goes next. The three pieces for tape and woodwinds are earthier and dirtier, clusters of noise that unfold like short stories. These pieces play with arcs of energy, the push and pull between Lee’s source sounds and Bertucci’s radical instant reimagining. The album is like a dream narrative, sometimes twisted and terrifying but often enchanted.

Tracklist:
1. Glitter and Gleam (04:30)
2. Image Mirror (03:35)
3. Meiosis (01:14)
4. Bags, Boxes, And Bubbles (08:16)
5. Division Music (06:22)
6. Mitosis (02:24)
7. Twine and Tape (02:42)
8. Azimuth (11:19)
9. Somebody Dream (02:06)


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